For fans of: the Trashwomen, the Shangri Las, the New York Dolls, the Ramones, the Bobbyteens, the Mummies, Girls in the Garage, and John Waters More street-grit than surfside, Thee Tsunamis are a rock’n’roll joyride with hellcat weed queens at the wheel. On their debut full-length Saturday Night Sweetheart, the Midwest-turf trio—Betsy (guitar), Jenna (bass) and Sharlene (drums)—blend girl-group
bubblegum with feral punk, hugging every hairpen turn of Kim Fowley’s twisted, trashbucket heart along the way. RIP. Saturday Night Sweetheart, with its jagged harmonies over fuzz-crusted pop hooks, marries the New York Dolls’ gutter-glam attitude with the sound of Brill Building teen-sploitation, to a much bloodier effect.

From heart-in-a-blender tales and drag-race party anthems to the title track’s proto-punk pyrotechnics, these 12 tunes are as catchy as they are cutting and together they tell a story as old as time: what the men don’t know, the little girls understand. Like Thee Tsunamis’ demo release A Goodbad Man Is Hard To Find (2013) and horror-concept EP Delirium and Dark Waters (2014), Saturday Night Sweetheart (May, 2015) was recorded to tape in the basement of Magnetic South and has the signature fidelity of a subterranean rock’n’roll echo-chamber. Plate reverb and tape delay spin some witchy doowop atmospherics between slasher guitar riffs and nerve rattling rhythms. Saturday Night Sweetheart is a date you don’t want to break.